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Courtesy Katie Zazueta — The security camera at the front of the home of Katie Zazueta captured imagery on the Fourth of July of an as-yet unidentified woman exiting a car, snatching the political sign supporting Sam Liccardo’s mayoral candidacy and sprinting back to the car, which was then driven away.

It’s a question neighbors of the well-to-do Willow Glen neighborhood are asking after a mysterious woman clad in bold yellow pants was caught on HD surveillance video swiping a San Jose mayoral campaign sign from a family’s front yard. The clip has since been spreading quickly across Facebook, pumping a little political intrigue into the normally slow summer months leading up to the November election for a new San Jose mayor.

According to Katie Zazueta, her family of four was out enjoying the Fourth of July holiday when they came back and noticed their “Sam Liccardo for Mayor” campaign sign was gone. They quickly checked the Dropcam they had installed on the front porch of their Meredith Avenue home, just off the downtown drag of Lincoln Avenue, and discovered what their 10-year-old daughter described as the “first crime she’s ever seen.”

The sharp video shows a dark gray sedan drive by then apparently turn around and pull up in front of the Zazuetas’ well-manicured house. After sitting in the car for about 10 seconds, a woman wearing a black sleeveless top, a black hat, dark sunglasses and those yellow pants that earned her the Banana Pants Bandit moniker online emerges from the passenger-side door. The woman calmly walks up to the sign, yanks it out of the lawn and appears to delightfully gallop back to the getaway car, which accelerates away.

The petty theft hasn’t been reported to the police and has generated more laughter than animosity. Someone even posted a tongue-in-cheek “wanted” flyer online.

“Really the crime in this wasn’t so much the sign but the fact that she went out in these yellow pants and could so easily be spotted,” Zazueta said Monday.

These so-called “sign wars” aren’t uncommon in San Jose and other Bay Area cities during election years, even in wealthy neighborhoods, but rarely are the sign thefts caught on video.

In this case, the sign in question supported Zazueta’s childhood friend, Liccardo, a San Jose councilman running to replace termed-out Mayor Chuck Reed in November.

Liccardo’s opponent, county Supervisor Dave Cortese, said he had no knowledge of the Banana Pants Bandit.

“But our staff claims there is a thief taking down Cortese signs called the Mango Top Marauder,” Cortese joked.

Zazueta doesn’t have any theories on the whodunit, and the Liccardo campaign isn’t pointing fingers, either.

“It’s disappointing to see something like this. We want this to be a clean campaign at every level,” Liccardo’s campaign manager, Ragan Henninger, said in a statement. She added that if the thefts continue, the campaign may start contacting the authorities. “But for now, we will just encourage everyone to have respect for opposing views and to have respect for private property.”

Although the 81-second video has been widely shared online, no one’s offered any hints as to who the sign-stealer may be. Her face and the vehicle’s license plate are both obscured in the video, and the driver never appears on tape.

As for Zazueta — who is not part of the Liccardo campaign and did not seek out media coverage — she’s mostly just upset that her free speech rights were besmirched, especially during a holiday meant to celebrate freedom.

“It just shows you that people have no kind of respect for other people’s opinions or boundaries,” she said. “It’s just unpatriotic.”

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